Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 32

"He will recover," she pronounced. "And then you will gather what you need, including those Fighters he came with, and get out of Beshenna. I don't want any of you or your trouble in my city while I put it back together."

"Trouble?" Talla put as much innocence in her voice as she could manage.

"I felt you in the mesh last night," she squinted her eyes as if to squeeze better memories from her brain. "Felt his thoughts ... and your thoughts. You are a very strange pair, both in the existence of your bond and the dangerous layers of rebelliousness inside it. The implication of monogamous desire alone ..."

Talla gulped, glad the golden woman looked away while searching her mind.

"Half of me thinks I should execute you both and be done with it," the Goddess's voice echoed with a disconnected intellectual quality. "But you still saved my city. You served me dinner, so to speak, and the dessert contained no poison. So I trust you're of no further danger."

Her gaze fell on Talla once more. "At least not for now. Such things are not mine to decide."

"Not yours to decide?" Talla's jaw dropped. "You're a Goddess."

"Probably not mine to decide, then," the golden woman nodded. "I've never been a Goddess before. These are matters for the gods above."

"Oh," Talla jerked back in surprise. "I didn't know they still talked to people."

"They don't, generally, child," the Goddess said. "But perhaps to you two, they will."

Talla's eyes widened and she sat in silence as Zhair'lo's head lolled and he finished suckling. Surplus milk ran in a small rivulet from the golden nipple, down the underside of the Goddess's breast to be soaked up by the black top still wrapped around her ribs. She laid Zhair'lo back on the bed, brushed his hair off his face and settled him in on his pillow.

"I will give you a sigil," the golden woman did not meet Talla's eyes, saving her gaze for Zhair'lo alone. "It will allow you to travel to Prima. There you can ask the gods what should be done with you. I should like to be told if you get an answer, though I doubt I will live long enough-" she self-consciously brushed her greying hair back with her fingers "- for such a message to reach me. Such is the price the gods have decreed I pay for my service to them."

"Eminence," Talla nodded gratefully.

"Now get yourself dressed," the Goddess refastened her top and rose up over Talla imperiously. "I don't know what goes for propriety in your city, but this-" she waved at a hand at the bed where she and Zhair'lo had slept together "-will not stand in mine."

---===================----

"Mistress!" the dark-haired Virgin attendant came down the dark, cold stairs in a rush. "You are requested above."

The woman in Adept's Yellows stood over a desk, examining scores of hastily scrawled notes, trying to make sense of them as she lined them up with much older, unrolled scrolls scattered about the massive space she'd been assigned.

"Takana," she sighed heavily. "I've masturbated all I can to help with the recovery operation. I know I've got four Within upgrades, but my clit is already raw, I don't care how much of that oil I put on it."

"It is not the recovery that needs you, Mistress Maksa," the voice of the girl in white showed strain. "It is the Sorceress of Pussy."

"Pussy needs me?" Maksa looked up.

"She desires a report, I believe," Takana emphasized the instruction by lifting her skirt to reveal the bare bit of light fuzz covering her mound and making a small horizontal motion across her genitals with one finger. Maksa knew this as a signal used by the genealogical conspirators of Beshenna.

"Stay here and guard my work, then," Maksa said hastily as she sped away. She turned back at the stairs to shake a threatening finger, "And for the gods' sake, don't move anything."

She bolted up the spiral metal stairs into the frenetic havoc of Sweetness's Hall. Exhausted women, scheduled for recovery operations both personal and structural, hurried to and fro, a far more energetic chaos than she had ever seen back home.

'But their Temple's just Fallen and been put back together. What could one expect?'

In a moment, she passed up another set of stairs into Pussy's Domain and through to see the Sorceress. Attendants sealed the doors and, one by one, removed their skirts and other assorted bottoms. Conspirators all, they waited.

"Anna, are we secure?" the Sorceress asked an Officer.

"The Goddess apparently finds us innocent in this affair."

"We are innocent," Pussy pointed out. "At least of murder, but the project will fall far behind now."

Maksa recognized this. The Goddess, Ascended from Form, would never consider involving herself in their project. It might even rank as suicide to ask. With considerable haste, the new Goddess had chosen the former Sorceress of Lips to Ascend as Queen of Sweetness, also blocking them out of that station. With all of the suspicion Endowment had raised before her murder and subsequent death, even getting the Sorceress of Pussy pregnant had become dangerously untenable.

On the other hand, that series of initial, decisive moves had ended the Goddess's declarations. She had attached no further statements regarding the reason for Endowment's sedition, nor any conditions or watch over Principia Pussy.

And, on top of that, they had ensured the safety of Magnus. They had protected him at the heart of the Temple, in the nursery like every other babe. The latest generation of their experimentation lived and could go on someday to have progeny of his own.

"Tell us, Maksa," the Sorceress sighed. "What have you found?"

"I was right," Maksa declared. "There is something in the women. I haven't pinned it down yet, but there are behaviours among the women that vary considerably during the Fall. If I can find out which ones matter - how the tendencies manifest in women - we can chart a new course for the breeding program."

Pussy inhaled deeply. "You are certain?"

"I'm the right woman, in the right place for once," Maksa said. "But we need to collect every bit of information from the last week - get every woman to answer honestly - and I can build up a proper record to work from. The answer's there, though, I know it."

Pussy nodded and looked slowly around the room of half-naked women.

"You shall have it, my dear. You shall have everything you need."

---===================----

A vast convoy formed up at the hastily repaired main gate of Beshenna's Temple. Carters lined up their horses to carry loads of wounded men and women to safer places, even while work crews worked to fortify damaged walls. Two days had done much to clear the ash from the air, and cremations and spates of rainy weather had taken care of the fouler stenches.

"Headed out already?" Chief Cameron nodded as Zhair'lo's squad formed up with the rest of the early departure convoy headed west to Gern. "There are still Enraged out there you could help us kill."

Zhair'lo nodded, understanding the warning in the gentle jibe. The Goddess's Ascension had killed every Enraged man with a hundred metres or so of the Temple's centre. Beyond that, others throughout the city had been rendered unconscious, much like the Catatonic, which the Temple had targeted for 'recovery'. But out beyond the city limits, where her power couldn't reach, the Goddess's enemies still lurked.

"We'll keep our eyes open, Sir," Zhair'lo promised as he looked around at those who'd be accompanying him. "I see Dol'ya, but where's the other Second, Tia?"

"The Sorceress of Within, you mean?"

"Oh," Zhair'lo replied, taken back. "I hadn't heard."

"She's stuck here now, poor thing," the Chief declared. He nodded at the bevy of Fighters arrayed about the convoy. "But you'll be plenty safe with all of these along. Have a good trip, Soldier."

"Sir!" Zhair'lo nodded as Cameron walked away.

Surveying the crowd, he saw that Shanata accompanied Talla yet, along with a number of Soldiers and members of Form Zhair'lo recognized. He continued scanning until his eyes met a pair staring straight back at him. He and the woman held each other's gaze as she approached him.

"Zhair'lo."

"Sonja."

"Mistress Sonja," she corrected.

Zhair'lo remained silent, glaring at her.

"I see you're well recovered today,"she noted, her eyes now staring intently over his head. "Only two days from your intended death."

"My intended ... how did you -?"

With a harrumph, Sonja turned on her heel and walked away.

Talla's thoughts rushed through his brain an instant later: 'It was her?! Why in the nine hells would she violate orders to save you?'

'I don't think we've ever understood her, Talla.'

'Madra Zen. I guess not.'

Zhair'lo closed his eyes and watched with Talla's instead as the groups formed up more officially. Through her mind, he watched her picking out those she knew and those she didn't, sorting the grievously wounded from the lightly injured, and critiquing the order of the wagons.

'Something wrong?' he wondered into her mind.

'I wouldn't have done it like this,' she told him. 'It isn't efficient, with the most wounded having to walk all the way to the front of the van.'

'They're the most likely to have to stop, though,' Zhair'lo pointed out. 'In order to rebandage and what not. We'd hate to leave them behind.'

Recalculations swirled in Talla's mind, and the order suddenly became more congruous.

'You feeling okay?'

'A bit achy,' she indicated her vagina. 'Kirana wasn't very gentle jabbing me like that.'

Zhair'lo gave her a mental nod of assent before opening his eyes.

'What now, Talla?'

'Now back to Gern. Zoe and Illya and everyone else deserve to know what happened, why we can never do what we planned.'

'Then to Prima?'

'We'll take as many as want to go. I think the sigil gives us that much. Then let's see what the gods have to say.'

'You really think they'll talk to us?'

'Why wouldn't they? We're pretty important, aren't we?'

---===================----

The Queen of Form in Gern sat awake late into the night, pouring over the reports coming back from Beshenna. Message handlers flagged armaments orders for her attention, along with requests for clothing, escorts for merchants, and maintenance requests for various buildings throughout the barracks.

She filled them out, carefully checking over the work of her underlings before signing them off and sending them on their way.

A particular scroll sat at the far corner of her desk, still rolled up and untouched.

She couldn't look at that one yet.

Not if she expected work to get done.

One by one, she dismissed her Disciples, sending them off to various parts of Gern on one last errand before a much deserved rest.

At last, all reports accounted for, she dismissed the attendants from her innermost sanctum and rose up to take the last scroll in hand. She walked out the back of her office and stood on the balcony, facing a crescent moon on the eastern horizon.

With a deep breath, she cracked the scroll, unrolled it and scanned down the list of names formally written there, reading them carefully by the light of the single, flickering torch at her back.

The writer had divided the parchment into sections according to the places where battles had occurred, and further broken it into sub-sections for the types of casualties.

Form's heart stopped as she found the name.

Under, "Rear guard, holding Sweetness Gate while the gate closed", listed under, "Death by indeterminate instrument", the short list of names included, "Master Kendrick Ofarin, Gern".

She lurched against the railing of the balcony, her body nearly doubling over as a brief, silent sob racked through her and threatened her balance. Her heart ached, melting with the loss of the unspeakable thing the reading of that name had cost her. She'd known he wouldn't be coming back, but the list sealed his death forever, and her liquified heart attested to the pain this knowledge caused.

Form straightened, calling upon her many upgrades to control her body and stand tall once more. The liquid in her breast congealed, then solidified, became again a structure of stone and cold metal. She had a job to do, and she would do it for as many more years as the gods gave her.

But she would never do it as she had done it for him.

---===================----

Author's Afterword:

Thanks to Mr. Ken Scades for all his fabulous help in making me a better writer throughout the production of this novel.

Thanks to Literotica for hooking me up with this audience.

Thanks to all of you for your votes, your comments, your follows on twitter, your connections on skype. Thanks for every email you've sent, every correspondence we've had.

Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how the story made you feel, who your favourite characters were, what hit you the hardest and what felt the weakest or whom I've forgotten.

I love hearing from you because your reactions are what make this effort worthwhile.

Cheers,

Xavier Torch.